Racism Beyond Donald Sterling

Now that the National Basketball Association has responded to the “outrage” over Donald Sterling’s most recent racist behavior, meting out punishment that bans him for life from any association with the league or with the Los Angeles Clippers, the team he owns, including games and practices, the public may be somewhat mollified. There is also a two-and-a-half-million-dollar fine and a promise that the N.B.A. will work to force the Clippers’ sale. But, as a longtime basketball fan who tried out for my segregated high-school team at a time when it was acceptable, in polite society, to talk about people like me in the way Donald Sterling did, my problem is that the punishment is related only to his recent verbal nastiness and not to his past, long-term behavior.

Earlier, I heard television commentators promoting the “historic,” “bombshell” presser by Adam Silver, who is fairly new in his job as N.B.A. commissioner. Afterward, various well-respected observers offered positive reactions to the punishment. And yet, while Sterling may be barred from associating with the team, there is no sign that he is about to disassociate himself from his views. According to Silver, Sterling did not express remorse; instead, he said that the remarks, caught on tape, accurately reflect Sterling’s beliefs. There was not, as is often the case after some racially painful public comment, any pretense that Sterling had been misunderstood, or that he had misspoken—or that anything could or should be done about that. As with the responses to so many others who express similarly unsavory views—most recently the cattle farmer Cliven Bundy, who wondered if folks like me weren’t better off during slavery—nothing that I can decipher addresses their deeply held positions, or the divisions and inequalities they attempt to rationalize.

While there is more than one national conversation about race going on almost every day, nothing is really happening, as far as I can determine, that really has a chance of getting at what this country does about race on a consistent basis. In recent months, the dialogue has been carried out on a variety of fronts. But it rarely goes to the heart of one of our basic problems. We have moved from the standard of equality and justice to a more amorphous new phrase in the lexicon: diversity and inclusion. And that allows a fair amount of wiggle room for those who are not committed to the ideal of a truly post-racial society. (And make no mistake: we are not there yet.)

Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento and a former N.B.A. player, told reporters immediately after the Sterling sanction was announced that he hoped “every bigot in this country sees what happened to Mr. Sterling and recognizes that if he can fall, so can you.” But having people think before they speak is only a partial victory if racism just perpetuates itself in silence. Instead, the incident points to the need for fundamental change in how we think and act.

So the big question remains: How to make that happen? Well, for one thing, we need more conversations about race that don’t just decry racism but that propose solutions. There are people who have gone deep into the issue on a consistent basis and who have a lot to say, but they don’t get as much air time or print space. And maybe, in the meantime, we can come up with something akin to anger management—courses in racism management, maybe. Some might find those useful for a lifetime. From any perspective, as one commentator said during the immediate reaction to the N.B.A.’s ruling, the issues raised by Sterling are “bigger than basketball.”